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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'' (1964) is a children's book by British author Roald Dahl. This story of the adventures of young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of eccentric candymaker Willy Wonka is often considered one of the most beloved children's stories of the 20th century.'' Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was first published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1964, and in the United Kingdom by George Allen & Unwin in 1967. The book was adapted into two major motion pictures: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory in 1971, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 2005. The book's sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, was written by Roald Dahl in 1972. Synopsis The story centres around an ordinary boy: Charlie Bucket. He is no stronger or faster than anyone else, his family is not rich, powerful or well-connected but he is the luckiest boy in the entire world, but just didn't know it yet. He lives near Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, but is so poor that he cannot buy as many Wonka bars as he would like. Charlie learns from his grandparents, who are very good storytellers, that many years ago Willy Wonka opened the largest chocolate factory in the world, but spies stole his recipes so he closed the factory. It didn't close forever though, and suddenly he decided to allow five children to visit the factory so that one of them would win a special prize at the end. The children have to find one of the five golden tickets hidden beneath the ordinary wrapping paper of five ordinary Wonka bars. So, Augustus Gloop (a greedy chocoholic), Veruca Salt (a spoilt brat), Violet Beauregarde (junior bubblegum champion), Mike Teavee (who loves TV shows and violence) and Charlie Bucket (the luckiest boy in the entire world) win tickets and visit the factory. "Accidents" happen while on the guided tour. The greedy Augustus falls in the chocolate river and gets accidentally sucked up and taken away to the room where they make the most delicious kind of strawberry flavoured chocolate coated fudge. Violet, ignoring Wonka's advice, tries some of his three course dinner gum and swells up like a blueberry. Veruca tries to grab a squirrel and ends up falling down the garbage chute in the direction of the incinerator (which thankfully is broken so there's about three weeks worth of rotten garbage to break her fall). Mike tries to use Wonka's chocolate television machine and ends up shrunk to about 6 inches high and has to be stretched out. In the end, it is Charlie who wins the prize - Willy Wonka's factory. Rooms There is a selection of themed rooms in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory which highlight a certain product or product development. Children on the tour meet an ironic, somewhat disturbing calamity in many of the rooms. A good example of this is the famous Chocolate Room. Everything in the room is edible, including the grass. It has a hot-melted chocolate waterfall that mixes the chocolate to a perfect texture. There are pipes that move the chocolate to different points within the factory. Augustus Gloop falls into the chocolate river and is sucked into a pipe that goes to the Fudge Room. Other rooms which are predominantly featured are the Inventing Room where Violet Beauregarde turns into a blueberry and is moved to the Juicing Room to be dejuiced. The Nut Sorting Room is where Veruca Salt is thrown down the Waste (garbage chute) with her father. The Spotty Powder Mixing Room is where Miranda Piker and her father fall to their seeming deaths. The Television Room is where Mike Teavee shrinks; he is stretched out in the Taffy Puller. Other rooms, hinted at but not visited, are listed below in alphabetical order. Each is given the name of the product it contains, which is presumably made or extracted there. BOLD 'names appear in the Great Glass Elevator or the chocolate river ride in the 2005 film. REGULAR names appear in the Great Glass Elevator or the chocolate river ride in the book * '"'Beetle Juicing"' * "'Black Box of Frogs"' * "'Blackberry Sausages"' * * '"Butterscotch And Buttergin"' * '"Candy-Coated pencils for Sucking"' * '"Cavity-Filling Caramels– No more dentists"' * '"Cheese and Anchovies * '"Chocolate Lip Rookies'" * '"Clotted Cream Room"' * '"Cocoa Cats"' * '"Coconut-Ice Skating Rinks"' * '"Cows that give Chocolate Milk"' * "'Creative Dog Flip'" * '"Crusty Cream Puff"' * '"Dessert Island'" * '"Dodgy Accents"' * '"Eatable Marshmallow Pillows"' * "'Eight Till Latte Room"' * '"Elastic Forest'" * '"Exploding Candy for your Enemies"' * '"Fizzy Lemonade Swimming Pools"' * "'Fizzy Lifting Drinks"' * '"Fizzy Lifting Drinks"' * '"Fragile Egos"' * "'Fudge Fallout Shower"' * "'Heart Shaped Lungs"' * "'Honeycombs and Brushes" * '"Hot Ice Creams for Cold Days"' * "'Incompetent Fools"' * '"Invisible Chocolate Bars for Eating in Class"' * "'Large Cavity'" * '"Leaky Canes'" * '"Lickable Wallpaper for Nursery Walls"' * "'Lickety Split Peas"' * '"Luminous Lollies for Eating in Bed at Night"' * '"Magic Hand-Fudge– When you hold it in your hand, you taste it in your mouth"' * '"Mechanical Clouds'" * '"Mighty Jam Monitor"' * '"Mint Jujubes for the Boy Next Door– They'll give him green teeth for a month"' * '"Naffy Taffy'" * '"Narnia'" * '"Nice Plums'" * '"Old Sneezes and Smells Dept."' * '"Orange Egg Flip'" * '"Pastry Room'" * '"People Poo'" * '"Pie Cream'" * '"Projection Room'" * '"Rainbow Drops– Suck them and you can spit in six different colours."' * '"Root Beer Goggles'" * '"Rubber Forest'" * '"Scratch and Sniff Room'" * '"Secretarial Poodles'" * '"Spewed Dumplings'" * '"Spewed Vegetables'" * '"Square Sweets that Look Round"' * '"Stars in their Pies'" * '"Stickjaw for Talkative Parents"' * '"Storeroom Number 54; All the Creams– Dairy Cream, Whipped Cream, Coffee Cream, Clotted Cream, Vanilla Cream, and Hair Cream"' * '"Storeroom Number 71; Whips– all Shapes and Sizes"' * '"Storeroom Number 77– All the Beans, Cacao Beans, Coffee Beans, Jelly Beans, and Has Beans"' * '"Strawberry-Juice Water Pistols"' * '"Supervitamin-Chocolate"' * '"The Rock-Candy Mine"' * '"T-Bone Steak Jell-O'" * '"Television Room'" * '"Toffee-Apple Trees For Planting in Your Garden– All Sizes"' * '"Very Very Small Room'" * '"Weird Lollipops'" * '"Whizdoodles'" * '"Wriggle-Sweets That Wriggle Delightfully in your Tummy after Swallowing"' * "'Yankee-Doodles'" Book revisions The original story was quite different than the one we see today. In 1961, the manuscript for "Charlie's Chocolate Boy" was born. In the original manuscript, ten Golden Tickets were hidden in Wonka chocolate bars every week. Mr. Wonka gave a tour of his factory every Saturday to that week's lucky recipients. In this draft, Charlie Bucket finds a ticket on his first attempt. The other nine children on the factory tour are not introduced to the reader until they meet their respective ends: * Augustus Pottle- falls in the chocolate river. * Miranda Grope- also falls in the chocolate river, despite Augustus's example. * Wilbur Rice and Tommy Troutbeck- climb in wagons running from the vanilla fudge mountain and end up in the "Pounding and Cutting Room." * Violet Strabismus- turns purple after chewing the three-course-meal gum. * Clarence Crump, Bertie Upside, and Terence Roper- each cram a whole mouthful of "warming candies" and over heat. * Elvira Entwhistle- falls foul of the squirrels in the Nut Room. Charlie Bucket climbs into a "chocolate boy" mould in the Easter Egg room and is encased in chocolate. He is taken to Mr. Wonka's house as a present for Freddie Wonka (Mr. Wonka's son). While there, Charlie witnesses a burglary. As a reward for helping to catch the thieves, Mr. Wonka gives him his own sweet shop, "Charlie's Chocolate Shop." This original manuscript didn't include Oompa Loompas, Grandpa Joe, or most of the characters that would eventually make it into the final draft. Responding to criticisms from the NAACP, Canadian children's author Eleanor Cameron, and others for the book's portrayal of the Oompa Loompas as dark skinned and skinny African pygmies working in Wonka’s factory for cacao beans, Dahl changed some of the text, and Schindelman replaced some illustrations (the illustrations for the British version were also changed). This new version was released in 1973 in the USA. In the revised version the Oompa Loompas are described as having funny long golden-brown hair and rosy-white skin. Their origins were also changed from Africa to fictional Loompaland. Lost chapter A resurfacing of a chapter intended to be in the book which featured Miranda Piker (a character who was going to be in the original story but dropped later) appeared in 2005, the very year that the Tim Burton movie adaptation was released. Miranda Piker's traits were that of a "teacher's pet", a bit of a diva, and tattle-teller who has never played or laughed. Her father, who may be a wealthy man like Mr. Salt, was a headmaster/principal at a very privileged school that may or may not be the school that his daughter attends. Thus, the amount of Golden Tickets given out was originally going to be six. Her elimination chapter is titled "Spotty Powder." Wonka introduces the group to a new candy that will make children temporarily sick so that they can miss school that day, which enrages Miranda and her father (as Miranda and her father believe that children should never play or get days off from school). They vow to stop the candy from being made, and carelessly storm into the secret room where it is made. Unfortunately, two screams are seemingly heard and Wonka reveals that the candy wouldn't work if he didn't "put a few headmasters in the mix every so often." He then reassures Mrs. Piker that he was joking and her husband and daughter are not actually dead, and that they weren't screaming but laughing. It's unclear what eventually became of the Pikers, but it can be assumed that they exited the factory like the other families. "The secret ordeal of Miranda Piker" can be read here. Derivations The book was filmed in 1971 as Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, starring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. It has also been produced by Swedish Television as still drawings narrated by Ernst-Hugo Järegård. Another film version entitled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka, was released on July 15, 2005. Both film portrayals are actually fairly faithful to the original story, yet add some new material. The Burton film in particular greatly expanded Willy Wonka's personal backstory. Both films likewise heavily expanded the personalities of the four "bad" children and their parents. There is also a line of candy called "The Willy Wonka Candy Company" in the United States, Australia and Canada that uses the book's characters and imagery for its marketing. They're made in Brazil, by Nestlé, but not sold there. In 1985, the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory video game was released for the ZX Spectrum by developers Soft Option Ltd and publisher Hill MacGibbon. On July 11, 2005, the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory video game was released for the Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo's Game Boy Advance, and Windows personal computer by developers Backbone Entertainment and High Voltage Software and publisher 2K Games. On 1 April 2006, the British theme park Alton Towers opened a family boat ride attraction themed around Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, based on the book. The ride features a boat section where guests travel around the chocolate factory in bright pink boats on a chocolate river. In the final stage of the ride, guests will enter one of two glass elevators where they will join Willy Wonka as they travel the factory, eventually shooting up and out through the glass roof. Awards and nominations *New England Round Table of Children's Librarians Award (USA 1972) *Surrey School Award (UK 1973) *Millennium Children's Book Award (UK 2000) *Blue Peter Book Award (UK 2000) Film Adaptation This book was first adapted into a film, released worldwide on June 30, 1971, named Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory with an estimated budget of $3 M, distributed by Paramount Pictures, directed by Mel Stuart, produced by David L. Wolper and starring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, Jack Albertson as Grandpa Joe and Peter Ostrum as Charlie Bucket. Although the movie grossed only $4 M and was considered a box-office flop, it is now considered a classic. Another film adaptation was released on July 10, 2005, starring Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka and Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket in a leading role, directed by Tim Burton and produced by Brad Grey. It was a hit, grossing about $470 M worldwide with an estimated budget of $150 M. It was distributed by Warner Bros. this time. Editions * ISBN 0-14-240108-0 (paperback, 2004) * ISBN 0-8488-2241-2 (hardcover) External links * Official Roald Dahl Website Category:Books